


the price of living motion

by eudaimon



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chekov is waiting for Sulu to return from a mission, standing and staring at the teleportation platform and seeing nothing, and in the thirty or so seconds when he's waiting in agony he has these horrible fantasies of what his life without Sulu would be like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the price of living motion

One thing, certain: he never sleeps well when Hikaru is gone. Yes, he understands why he has to go, which doesn’t mean that he likes it. A pulsar is a star which has no say in its own death. On Alpha shift at the conn, he sits and pages through reports but he always keeps one eye on the screen, on the leap and throb of the line that is the visual representation of Hikaru Sulu’s dancing heart (having watched Sulu fence and, afterwards, made love with him in wide white beds, Chekov has no other option but to think that Sulu’s heart must be a dancer). That blue line threads it’s way through every dream that he has. Sometimes, Chekov dreams about saving Hikaru and the Captain in the skies above Vulcan. The way that people talk about it, they make it sound like he reached out, physically reached through silent space and rushing atmospheric wind and caught them in his cupped hands, but it wasn’t like that at all. He put his faith in equipment. He trusted equations that he had learned without ever knowing that he’d used them. Mr Scott could have done the same. 

Sometimes, though, Chekov wants to believe that it happened like people say it did. He wants to believe that he could reach out and touch Hikaru, no matter the space and time between them. He wants to think that he would know him by the beating of his heart.

A navigator in his bones and his brain and his beating heart, Chekov has no map for this, no schematic or star-chart.

He runs a lot while Hikaru is planet-side. He wears one of Hikaru’s t-shirts – the one with the Starfleet logo that he wears for fencing, worn soft and thin by the slip-slide of long muscles – and a sweater than he can pull down over his hands. He listens to music that throbs with base and the pound of his feet becomes as involuntary as heartbeat or nerve-response. His father, his Papa, he always says that, of all of his beautiful and beloved children, the oldest best recalls the wife that he lost. Marta Nikolovna Chekov was sixteen when her first son was born and Andrei always said that she was young enough to still be pliable and she pressed him to her breast, her newborn firstborn, like the imprint of a key pressed in cuttlefish by a thief’s thumb. She stole a little bit of herself and gave it to him, to her Pasha, so that, twenty-one years and five babies later, it would be easier to call her to mind. Chekov likes to think about that, sometimes. He thinks that he knows how to run because, once upon a time, blowing vapour in the cold air as she crossed the Neva river, his Mama knew how to run, too.

All fairytales come from Russia, but happy endings…they were invented somewhere else.

He loses count of laps. He runs on the shuttle deck, which is dark and silent. The away team beamed down to the surface. Chekov wonders if machines can get lonely in their circuits, the way humans can in hearts? There is an ache in the muscles of his thighs that he runs through, but there’s an ache in his heart that there is no escaping. He learns to live with it. His father has a limp from falling while ice-skating with his mother on the Neva and shattering his knee. Chekov thinks that the ache in his heart when Hikaru is gone is a little like that: it’s a disability that he learns to live with. It’s a hurt that he has learned to operate despite.

There has been no signal from the away team for a week. That blue line has been flat and unmoving for seven days. While he cannot find it in himself to believe that Sulu is _dead_ , sometimes, Chekov allows himself to wonder: how did his father live fifteen years with his aching heart?

Andrei is not a big man, but his eldest son thinks that, maybe, he is made out of steel and ice, to be so strong.

Static through his headphones. The patch is ingenious, rigged by Mr Scott because Hikaru grew tired of Chekov not hearing his communicator while running. For a moment, the line chatters and sticks and then he hears it, clear as day.

 _They’re coming back, laddie,_ says a familiar voice through the ether, pressed into Chekov’s ear like a solitary thought of his lonely, guilty heart.

He stops for a moment to catch his breath, stripping out of his sweatshirt, taking the pulse in his throat with two pressed fingers. Sometimes, Hikaru leaves a bruise just there. He closes his eyes and tilts his head up towards the ceiling, feeling the sweat on his face cooling in the breeze from the vent.

He is steel and ice. Usually, he would put his faith in equipment, but equipment has been wrong before. It’s harder to put faith in human hearts, wearing on the nerves, but worth it. Humans do things that machines could never conceive of, even if they dreamed. Chekov has never met a person so consistently surprising as Hikaru Sulu.

He abandons his sweatshirt on the floor of the deck and runs, with his headphones twisted in the hollow of his throat to keep them secure.

At the transporter console, Mr Scott’s face is a picture of concentration. Chekov knows better than to disturb him. He knows better than to ask if there’s any news. Out of uniform, he makes himself as unobtrusive as possible, back pressed against the wall. He takes his own pulse again. There is no accounting for the rapid throb of his heart. He can taste it, his heart: bitter copper in the back of his throat. He closes his eyes and all he can see is a flat-line, electric blue.

 _Please don’t_.

He distracts himself by watching Mr Scott at the console. Their techniques differ considerably and Chekov tries to interest himself with that, tries to think of it as like a game of chess, anticipate the next move, but that just brings him back to Sulu and the game that they’ve been constantly playing for months, leaving the board set up in Chekov’s quarters, where Sulu can constantly clear the playing area like a bird of paradise, picking at gum papers and complaining about dirty crockery. 

_Oh, God, if Sulu doesn’t come back, if he’s the one that doesn’t come back then the time is going to come when Chekov will sit at his desk and take each piece off the board one by one, put them into the case one by one and finally the board, and shut the lid. The set is Sulu’s, but Chekov won’t be able to bring himself to put it back with the rest of his things. He’ll hold onto it and, for years, when he’s lonely, he’ll take each piece out one by one and set up the board and look at it for a long time before he puts it away again. He’ll lie in bed at night with a pawn curled in his fist and he’ll wonder how it’s possible to be this lonely for this long and he’ll want to know how anybody loves more than one person like this in their life, and…_

His hands are trembling, so he puts them in his pockets and shifts his weight in his sneakers. Preparing to beam up is a complicated process, for all the Captain shouts about it and makes it seem as simple as flicking a switch. There is a lot that can go wrong. Care is beneficial and saves lives. Chekov has never seen the equipment malfunction, which doesn’t mean that it can’t.

He stares at the pad and imagines the flickering light and something smoking, a human foot, maybe, or a sleeve without an arm. 

Without any reason at all, he remembers that, if they do not come back tonight then he must place a call to Sulu’s mother at nine p.m San Francisco time. She worries if she doesn’t hear from them. In four years, they have become more or less interchangeable in her mind. She knows that Chekov has no mother of his own, and so she has stepped up, and she loves him, if not as well as she loves her own son, then well enough.

 _God, standing at that door, his hands would tremble and it would take him three or four goes before he could actually press the doorbell. The graceful chimes echoing through the house behind the green front door would make him want to weep, but he wouldn’t, because he would still be a Starfleet officer, companion and not victim of his broken heart. He would think about going in his uniform but, in the end, go in jeans worn soft by wear and a t-shirt that Hikaru liked when he wore it, comb his hair with his fingers, a medal of St Peter over his heart and a silver ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. He would rehearse all of the ways that Russians had to say_ I’m sorry this should never have happened. I loved him very much _and none of them would be enough. After a moment, she would open the door and look at him for a long time. He would not cry, though he would want to, desperately want to put up both hands and surrender to his fucking broken heart. She ‘d take his hands with both of hers and she’d be trembling too and he’d ask when Hikaru’s sisters were coming, and…_

He’s sweating under the lights and he twists his neck to wipe his face on the sleeve of his t-shirt. He imagines that he can smell Hikaru on the cotton but all that he can really smell is his own sweat. He ran too hard. He tilts his head back towards the ceiling to try and get the cool air from the vent to blow over his skin. Someone comes through the door; he opens his eyes but doesn’t recognize her, pretty ensign in Engineering colours. She smiles at him.

“Sorry,” she says, and he nods and

 _People would treat him like a widow, even though the ring on his finger means nothing more than a promise made on his eighteenth birthday._ I’ll never leave you. _People will treat him like a bereaved spouse and all he’ll be able to think, trying to do his job with that ring still on his finger is_ liar. You fucking liar. You promised me and here you are, gone. And how am I supposed to believe anything ever again? _Pretty girls would touch his shoulder gently, and Uhura would pause behind him and touch his hair, and he would be so angry forever, with nowhere to go with it, and…_

He snaps from his reverie. Mr Scott was talking. He turns to her, the ensign with the bright blond hair that shines, even in the dim light of the transporter deck. 

“What did he say?”  
“Six, Lieutenant,” she says, smiling at him. “There are six to beam up.” 

_Six_. When there should be seven. Chekov feels bile rising in his throat and his back runs with cold sweat and he grasps for something but there’s nothing to stop him falling. Dimly, he’s aware of his ass hitting the deck and the sparks of dancing blue light on the pad are the exact shade of that flat-line that shows up in all his dreams.

*

_Ain't it funny how things'll turn out?  
I never even kissed you on the mouth  
When we said good-bye._

_2272_

These are the continued voyages of the Starship Enterprise. 

The ship is barreling through space and throwing off light like a dying star. This is what the Klingons call the dead space, and Captain Pavel Andreievich Chekov can see why.

No stars.

Around him, the crew is quiet and efficient, which is how he likes it. He expects it that way. The Enterprise isn’t the flagship anymore, isn’t brand new, state-of-the-art, not the star of anybody’s sky. Her crew is tempered by sorrow and loss. To lose so many of their brothers in so many futile ways. It hurts in a way that cannot adequately be put into words.

Chekov was twenty-eight, the first time he sat in the Captain’s chair. It’s taken a long time to feel comfortable, like it had known Kirk’s shape for so long, like a lover might. Still, two years later, it’s his chair, and the crew, if they don’t love him, then at least they respect him enough to do their jobs as he has come to expect.

He speaks with less of an accent every year.   
It’s been ten years since he last saw the snow in Piter.

At thirty, he still runs. His body understands it better now that he’s older. Long distance running is not a young man’s game. His mother was twenty-two years old when she died, eight years younger than he is now, so who knows how fast she might have run in her life, if she’d had the time.

He still runs on the shuttle deck. He has the computer keep laps because it’s been a long time since there was anybody to sit with his back against the wall. Sulu never used to lose count, but Sulu’s been dead for nine years, sent in a coffin into deep, cold space with a three legged rhinoceros tucked under one arm so that he wouldn’t have to make that long journey alone. 

That had been the very end of Pavel Chekov’s childish things.

In the middle of Gamma shift, the hallways are dim and quiet. He strips off his sweater and walks towards his quarters and there is one door that he still skims with his fingers as he walks past. A ring still worn on the fourth finger of his right hand.

A promise made when he was eighteen, forever.

The Captain’s quarters have never stopped feeling too big for him. He wallows in all of that space. Nine years have made him spare and tidy. Sometimes, he wonders what Hikaru would think if he could see. Probably, he would think that something magic had happened. It would never occur to him that this is the best that Chekov could do, with the ruins and the ashes of what was left.

In the corner, in a pool of warm light, a chess-set in graceful silver and black. A gift from Sulu’s mother. He pulls his shirt over his head and folds it into neat quarters, sets it on the back of a chair. The pieces on the board never move. Some people keep bedrooms as a memorial. Chekov only has a chessboard, frozen forever in time.

“Computer,” he says, moving around the table, picking up one piece and setting it down in place again. “Initiate program HS-capa-beta-3.”

Holo-technology is in its infancy but Chekov is a genius with wires and programming. It’s a little project, something that he works on in stray moments, something close to his heart. 

He tries not to think about it too hard, because of what it makes him.

The lights in the room dip and, when they come back up, there’s a familiar figure sitting in a straight backed chair. Familiar, still, after nine years. Familiar, still, after so long distant. He wears what he always wore: jeans, a t-shirt with a Starfleet logo, worn thin by the slip-slide of long muscles. His feet are bare. Bare-chested, Chekov stares at him, one hand pressed against his chest. It’s always the same; he did this, he knows that he did this, entirely constructed this from lines of code and yet this quickening of his heart.

“Hikaru,” he says, quietly. Always quiet because, somehow, he’s still ashamed of this. He’s ashamed of what he’s done here.

Hikaru turns to look at him and Chekov isn’t sure when he started holding his breath. The face is a work of art, based on a photo of Sulu that he himself took, on the bed with a knee on either side of narrow hips, Sulu’s hands resting on his waist. He looks young and rumpled. Chekov stares at the stretch of his shirt across his chest.

Oh, his heart aches.

The face is detailed, but the program itself is pretty simple. It’s limited in what it can do. What _he_ can do. He doesn’t speak. He barely moves. He smiles and it doesn’t touch his eyes the way it ought to. Chekov’s never been able to get the smile right.

It isn’t the smile that he’s worried about.

Usually, he ends up stretched out on his bed or on the couch, with his hand inside his pants. Somehow, he can’t bring himself to be naked like this. It would be one step too far into something that he’s not willing to address. He leans back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him on the bed. Sulu sits in the straight backed chair. On different days, Chekov focuses on different things: the graceful twist of Sulu’s hands, maybe, or the spread of his thighs…the tumble of his hair across his forehead. Sometimes, he has Sulu get up and walk towards the window and he watches Sulu’s ass in his jeans and tries not to think about how none of the stars mean anything to this version of the man that he loves. He’s never been able to figure out how to program star-stories.

He hasn’t fucked anybody since Sulu. He makes do with his own hand, his fingers curled around his cock, stroking firmly, quickly. Sometimes, he goes slow, teases himself, makes himself wait. It’s sort of like a punishment. He hurts himself for making do for so long.

He opens his eyes and the hologram is watching him, lips slightly parted, head on one side. It’s a look that Chekov never saw on Sulu’s actual face, bald-faced curiosity, eager like a child. It might be enough to throw him out of it on any other night but his belly’s already tightening, wrists and lips trembling, toes curling and a little sound pressing out of him, Russian, _I love you even though you left_.

He comes between his fingers, his eyes squeezed shut and he breathes like a runner, like he’s run hard and run far and maybe it’s been nine years running hard through twilight, like his mother running with her head down beside the Neva in the autumn time.

“Chekov,” says a familiar voice. “Pavel. Come on, Pavel. Come on, Pasha. It’s me.”

The hologram doesn’t talk. The hologram _doesn’t_ talk. His eyes snap open and he stares and that’s a look that he’s seen on Sulu’s face before, that worried look, that concerned look. He usually saves that look for hard flying.

And then he smiles. He smiles and it’s fucking _perfect_.

“Oh, Jesus,” breathes Chekov, staring. “It’s really you.”

Once he can breathe again, he can take the measure of Sulu, kneeling in front of him like he was never gone. There’s a long graze on his left cheek, still bloody and raw and the shadow of a bruise under one eye. Chekov reaches up and cups his cheek with one hand.

“I thought that you were dead.”

Sulu smiles but it doesn’t touch his eyes.

“Emerson’s dead,” he says. 

Emerson. Chekov can’t place the name, and he feels a stab of guilt, cold, like an icicle between the ribs.

“Your monitor. The…the line.”  
“Turns out the monitors don’t like it when you nearly drown,” he says, and then he leans in and kisses Chekov, deep and sweet, in front of everyone, just like that.

There it was again, that feeling.

And his father had never been a runner, but he said that he felt like a runner, the way his heart would race when he used to stand on the bridge over the Neva and she would run towards him, every time his Marta Nikolovna came home,

*

On his knees with his hands on Sulu’s hips, he presses him back against the wall and swallows him as deep as he can. He bobs his head, pressing his tongue flat against the underside of Sulu’s cock. He could cry, he’s so grateful. Sulu’s trembling hands press into his hair. The knuckles on his right hand are split from fighting and, eventually, Chekov wants to hear everything that happened down there but, for now, he wants this, just this, Sulu unable to keep his hips still and fucking his mouth now, and Chekov’s hands press back and cup his ass, squeezing and pulling him deeper.

“I fucking love you,” mumbles Sulu as he starts to come, as Chekov squeezes his eyes closed and concentrates on swallowing as smoothly as he can. “I fucking love you so much.”

Sulu sinks down onto his knees and gathers Chekov against him, kissing him without giving Chekov time to drink something or even wipe his mouth. His tongue presses against Chekov’s, and it’s a kiss that says _I didn’t think I was coming back_.

“Are you sore?” murmurs Chekov, his lips against Sulu’s, staying close because he didn’t think that he could pull away. He gently brushes his thumb against the graze on Sulu’s jaw. “Do you need to lie down? Sleep? Can I…something from the replicator?”

Sulu sighs contentedly, his forehead resting against Chekov’s and shakes his head, a smile tugging at both corners of his mouth.

“Pavel, all I need is a shower and you,” he says, his hand skimming down the curve of Chekov’s spine over worn cotton. “And _then_ I’m going to sleep for a fucking week.”

“I’ll join you,” murmurs Chekov, smiling himself. “I feel like I ran fucking marathons.”

“C’mon,” says Sulu, and doesn’t move so, in the end, Chekov struggles to his feet and holds out both of his hands.

“You come on,” he says and Sulu takes both of his hands. Chekov leans back, pulling Sulu up to his feet and then he lifts Sulu’s hand and kisses torn knuckles. Sulu gets this particular look on his face, this wistful little smile, bending his head to kiss Chekov gently as his fingers twist into the hem of Chekov’s shirt, which is actually _his_ shirt and pulls it up over his head. Chekov’s hands are already at Sulu’s waistband, unbuttoning his uniform pants.

The shower in Sulu’s quarters never runs hot enough, but they make do. It always amuses Chekov; how the angles are a little bit off, it’s a little bit awkward with his back pressed against the tile and one leg hooked up around Sulu’s hip, one arm curled around Sulu’s neck and his free hand pressed against the wall. Sulu kisses too hard with a split lip that reopens and Chekov tastes blood. His heart aches that Sulu was so wounded, but, at the same time, there’s pride in his heart pulsing like a supernova. Under the warm spray of the shower, with Sulu deep inside him and grazing against a spot that makes him shudder with every stroke, Chekov realizes how long it’s been since he slept properly. Tonight, he will crawl into bed with Sulu and sleep as long as he can, sleep until somebody wakes them.

That sounds like the best thing that they can hope for.

“Oh, Christ,” he mumbles and turns his head, looking for Sulu’s mouth. “Oh, _Christ_.”

Sulu gropes for his hand and presses it up over his head, stretching his body tight and that’s how Sulu comes, pushing into Chekov like that, and then he curls his free hand around Chekov’s dick and he strokes him until he’s sobbing in his arms.

“Why are you crying?” murmurs Sulu, smoothing his hair and tugging him in against his chest as he turns off the water. They just stand there in the shower tray, holding on tight.

“I thought you were dead,” sobs Chekov, so hard that he can’t lift his head. Sulu’s fingers curl around the back of his neck like they were made to fit there and his other hand finds Chekov’s and brings it up to rest over his heart.

“Does that feel dead to you?” murmurs Sulu, and kisses him again, and Chekov’s heard speeds up like a runner’s, and he closes his eyes and imagines running along the banks of the Neva river like his mother used to and, on the bridge, Sulu’s standing there with Piter’s lights shining on his face, just where Andrei Chekov used to wait.

Chekov closes his eyes and concentrates on the throb of Hikaru Sulu’s dancing heart.


End file.
